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Thinking back to all of the Lian Li and Lancool cases I have had the pleasure of looking at over the past few years, I have seen what spending a bit more in the case of Lian Li gets, and what is offered at a budget in the Lancool line. That already in my head, there are certain expectations I …

Today we’re going to be looking at our first A75 chipset motherboard in the form of the ASUS F1A75-V Pro. Of course, we’ve already done a big preview on this board that covered everything on the board and the BIOS; because of that we’ll be getting straight into the test system, talk about overclocking and get into the performance side …

Looking back when I was a stubborn and arrogant little child (Some 3-4 years ago), it was almost crystal clear to me that laptop cooling pads were a waste of money. A Reason? Well, at the time, it seemed ludicrous as to why and how adding additional cooling to the underside of a notebook could improve performance when; (A) Even …

Logitech are a brand that don’t really require an introduction, as they are very much like a household brand now, with more products on the market than every before, in many different areas of the peripheral market. One of the main accomplishments for them is in the keyboard market, offering very unique products for all types of users. Now before …

Today we are going to look at the Corsair Obsidian 650D Mid-Tower case which is the smallest model in the Obsidian range.  It shares the same styling cues as the larger 700D and 800D cases but comes in at a much more affordable price point.  It doesnt look like Corsair have compromised much on the feature set to achieve this …

There are hundreds of gaming mice on the market at the moment all competing by presenting different unique features, customisation and superior specifications. Today we are taking a look at a gaming mouse that offers many advanced features and customisation options, but the question is- does it actually perform? CM Storm is a subsidiary of the highly respected PC power …

Keeping with the theme of storage weve got going lately Ive got a hard drive dock from a company called Siig for review today. It doesnt have any fancy name but it does have a cooling fan built into it, something that I dont think Ive ever seen in a hard drive dock. Lets just get right into it.. Full …

As you may know by now, Cougar is a brand that belongs to HEC/Compucase, and the Evolution is a mid-tower case with interesting features, such as a 3.5″/2.5″ hot-swap docking station, a two-channel analog fan controller, and eight expansion slots, offered for USD 110 in the US. Let’s check it out. Full story at Hardware Secrets.

STORAGE AND PERIPHERAL BENCHMARKS CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small benchmark utility for hard drives (as well as flash drives) that enables rapid measurements of sequential and random read/write speeds. The USB 2.0 test was performed using the 64GB Patriot SuperSpeed USB 3.0 flash drive: The USB 3.0 test was performed using the 64GB Patriot SuperSpeed USB 3.0 flash drive: XFast …

COMPUTATION AND PRODUCTIVITY BENCHMARKS 7-Zip 64-Bit Edition 7-Zip is an open source file archiver designed originally for Microsoft Windows. 7-Zip operates with the 7z archive format, and can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command line interface, graphical user interface, or Windows shell integration. Sorenson Squeeze 7.0 Sorenson Squeeze is a compression suite for video. It encodes to multiple …

CLOSER LOOK, SPECIFICATIONS, AND BENCHMARK TESTING PLATFORM Right off the bat, the exterior packaging tells us that this is no ordinary motherboard. The box has a sleek aesthetic that looks like brushed aluminum. The front lists a few of the unique features that ASRock has engineered, such as On/Off Play, along with the supported Intel architecture: The back has a …

SPECIFICATIONS, OVERVIEW, AND FEATURES Here is a quick stat-sheet of the different chipsets and what they offer. As you can see, the Z68 chipset is identical to the P67 except only in two areas: Core elements and enhancements the Z68 chipset brings: To start off the review, I would like to explore some of the unique features of the ASRock …

BIOS AND OVERCLOCKING As we can see, ASRock have done a terrific job with their UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) BIOS. As stated, it looks much more prettier and easier to grasp a hold of than the traditional, bland BIOS screen: Novice overclockers can choose from a veriety of ASRock overclocking fail-safe profiles, which are listed in 200 MHz increments. Also, …

FINAL WORDS AND CONCLUSION As enthusiasts and consumers move on from the disastrous Cougar Point debacle, it is refreshing to see manufacturers like ASRock providing rock-solid motherboards. In essence, the Z68 chipset is nothing revolutionary. It utilizes the onboard GPU offered by the H67 chipset, while retaining the dynamic and massive overclockability via the P67s capability to adjust multipliers when …

TEMPERATURE, POWER, AND EFFICIENCY The ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 yielded some excellent results when it came to overall efficiency: ASRock’s Intelligent Energy Saver (IES), however, is highly worth mentioning, as it has contributed its fair share to keep the entire system as adept as possible. This feature can be found in the snazzy ASRock BIOS, which I will be getting …